Stephen R. Walli, a former Microsoft employee, has an article on the O’Reilly Network’s ONLamp.com titled Perspectives of the Shared Source Initiative. If you are interested in free or open source software, or if you are a Windows developer, this article is worth a look. Stephen’s article lays out the prospects of Microsoft and open source without the often-clueless marketing spin found in most of the information provided by Microsoft itself.
What I take away from that article is confirmation that Microsoft as we know it would pretty much have to self-destruct in order to move to an open approach to its core products. They are accountable to shareholders who have grown quite accustomed to Microsoft’s consequences-be-damned, capital-mongering behavior. So, hell will freeze over before Microsoft truly opens up of their own accord, and the “Shared Source Initiative” is far from what it was first perceived as. No big surprise there.
As an open source and Linux user and advocate, I can tell you that the realities of Microsoft and their attitude don’t factor into the picture for me. Don’t open it up; I don’t want it, anyway.